Longhorns Insider: Kearney case not going away anytime soon

By Mike Finger :
March 19, 2013
: Updated: March 20, 2013 1:37am

Texas women's coach Bev Kearney celebrates with team after the Longhorns won the team title in the NCAA Track & Field Championships at Sacramento State's Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, Calif. on Saturday, June 11, 2005.

AUSTIN — On Sept. 8, Texas' football team will fly home from Utah. By the time the Longhorns board the plane, they will know, based upon their performance against BYU the previous night, whether they're any closer to the grand resurgence many have awaited for three years.

And by the next morning, the biggest story on campus could be the university being sued by a former track and field coach.

Although there are an incalculable number of opinions about the many ambiguities, ramifications and side plots of the Bev Kearney saga, the one certainty is it's not going away. For an athletic department eager to escape a recent era of on-field disappointment and extracurricular drama, Kearney's case makes it all the more difficult to move on.

The EEOC has 180 days to investigate Kearney's claim before she can sue UT, which her lawyer, Derek Howard, said she intends to do. The 180-day window expires Sept. 8.

In the meantime, multiple staffers at UT — including in the athletic department — could be subject to questioning. Howard said he has knowledge of “in excess of 10” inappropriate relationships between UT staffers and subordinates. He said such relationships are “part of the culture” at UT and that none of the staffers involved have been subject to the same treatment Kearney received when the school discovered last fall she'd had an affair with a student-athlete in 2003.

Kearney, who won six national championships at UT, was suspended last fall, and the school was preparing to terminate her before she resigned in January.

The key to Kearney's case will be proving she was treated differently on the basis of her race (she is black) or her gender. Malinda Gaul, a San Antonio attorney who has spent more than two decades handling employment cases, said the EEOC has the option of taking sworn statements from staffers accused of being involved in similar relationships.

If such relationships are proved to have existed, the circumstances around them will be compared to Kearney's case.

“Is there a significant difference there?” Gaul said. “They will have the burden of proving that someone at her level did the same thing and didn't have adverse action taken against them.”

UT maintains it had ample reason when it began steps to fire Kearney. Patti Ohlendorf, vice president of legal affairs, released a statement Saturday saying “the relationship that (Kearney) had with the student-athlete is unprofessional and crosses the line of trust placed in the head coach for all aspects of the athletic program and the best interests of the student-athletes on the team.”

Last month, the university revealed assistant football coach Major Applewhite had been reprimanded in 2009 for what was described as a one-time incident with a graduate student trainer. Applewhite had his salary frozen for more than a year but has since been twice promoted, most recently as offensive play-caller.

Howard said the EEOC will examine that case, as well as others. He said Kearney has not yet asked UT for a specific financial settlement, but she was about to receive a five-year contract extension worth more than $400,000 per season when she was suspended. If she asks UT for anything close to the total value of that extension, it would have to be approved by the board of regents, who have been publicly at odds with school president Bill Powers.

So even though mediation remains an option, it's an unlikely one. And next fall?